GitHub Sponsors is a funding program run by GitHub, Inc. on its code hosting site. It lets people and organizations pay money directly to the developers and organizations who design, build and maintain open-source projects, which are software projects whose source code is public for anyone to use and change.
A maintainer sets up a sponsored developer or organization profile, creates sponsorship tiers, submits bank and tax information and turns on two-factor authentication. A Sponsor button then appears on the maintainer's GitHub profile and repositories. A sponsor picks a tier and chooses a one-time or a monthly payment, which uses the sponsor's existing GitHub billing date and payment method. Companies can list the projects they depend on and fund many of them in a single transaction, or pay by invoice. Anyone can sponsor, but a maintainer must live in a supported region to receive money. Webhooks and a GraphQL API report sponsorship events to other software.
Sponsorships from personal accounts carry no fee; sponsorships from organization accounts carry a percentage fee.